We have access to mind-numbing amounts of data – the trash and the treasure, the ridiculous and the not-so-sublime … We were promised that all these new options would enrich us. And yet even with this gluttony of choices, our diet is getting thinner … The acceleration of daily life, this confusing mad rush to get ahead of the future, the speed of life in and about the media, is eroding our ability to gather the building blocks to do the real and necessary work of creating new products.
Predictor: Diller, Barry
Prediction, in context:A 1995 article for Wired magazine, carried the keynote address delivered by QVC CEO Barry Diller at the American Magazine Conference in Laguna Niguel, California. Diller also served as chair and CEO of Fox Inc. and worked as an executive at ABC and Paramount, and his words come from those experiences. Diller says: ”The currents of communication are churning relentlessly … furiously. The pace of life won’t slow down. It just keeps speeding up. The fact is, we are awash in a sea of information: junk mail, promotions, fun facts, instant news. We have access to mind-numbing amounts of data – the trash and the treasure, the ridiculous and the not-so-sublime … We were promised that all these new options would enrich us. And yet even with this gluttony of choices, our diet is getting thinner. Meanwhile, we’re becoming cluttered with all kinds of info-accessories: CD-ROMs, computers, online services, the Internet. And not only is it decreed that we have to try to comprehend the tonnage of stuff we’re supposed to read, but it is ordered that we have to understand and use all these new technologies or we will be fossilized. All this information and all these new products were supposed to make life easier, but now we work harder, longer – just to stay in place and keep up. I point all this out not because I’m a cynic about the power of technology – far from it. But I believe the acceleration of daily life, this confusing mad rush to get ahead of the future, the speed of life in and about the media, is eroding our ability to gather the building blocks to do the real and necessary work of creating new products.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Information Overload
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Don’t Repackage – Redefine! We Have to Resist Media Imperialism – the Tendency to Colonize, to Define New Technologies in Terms of the Old
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.02/diller_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney